Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) systems act as a bridge between computer databases and the people that access them. IVR systems are popular and cost effective, providing a self-service customer interface for businesses with little direct labor costs. IVR systems have evolved over time, providing improvements such as touch-tone replacement where the system may, for example, prompt “for information press or say one”. These systems replace touch tone interfaces with speech recognition applications that recognize a set of spoken numbers and letters that appear on a touch tone keypad.
Some improved IVR systems provide directed dialogs where the system may, for example, prompt “would you like ticket pricing or availability?” and the caller responds with “availability”. Typically, directed dialog systems are designed to recognize a small set of keywords spoken by a caller. Further improvements to existing IVR systems include natural language processing, where the system may, for example, prompt “what transaction would you like to perform?” and the caller responds with “transfer 200 dollars from savings to checking”.